There is a beach clean at Perranporth Beach in Cornwall on the 29th December. We shall be going. By ‘we’ I mean me, my Husband and my three children. I know beach cleans are not new, but I still want to rave about what a fantastic initiative they are. It both draws attention to the scale of the problem and normalises the fact that we have to clean up after ourselves – both to adults and their children.
One thing I find most fascinating is how more aware, more passionate and concerned school children are about plastic pollution. My son is 8 and very educated about the causes and effects of plastic in our oceans, simply from reading (a BIG shout out to whizzpopbang science mag for kids, here), watching telly and school. His classmate did a presentation on the effect of plastic on marine animals last week and another of his classmates wrote to the Headteacher asking if the school could coordinate a beach clean. (Incidentally her Dad asked me if I could find out about how to do a beach clean and I said, as Community Leader with SAS I will organise one! Am excited – I have wanted to do one for ages. His daughter can be the Student Liason Officer 🙂 This will probably be closer to Springtime so WATCH THIS SPACE!) The kids KNOW what the problems are. What we also need to do is to provide solutions and the opportunity to enact them, thereby normalising environmentally protective behaviours.
We have a duty of care to future generations to show them and teach them how to be better than we are. Our parents generation discovered plastic and we took it to a whole new level with convenience living. We now need to undo these habits and find new, sustainable, kind ones and pass them on to our children. I am not saying everyone needs to start making their own clothes and living off the land. I am sensible enough to know that we will not be able to completely change how we live. But we can, as citizens and planetary animals, be open to the idea that how we do things needs to be challenged. We cannot afford to be thoughtless and trusting of the Man who sells our packet sandwiches in non-recyclable plastic. Instead we need to say ‘Hang on! There are compostable, plant-derived alternatives you know?’. We need to say:
Stop grouping fruit and veg in plastic bags for us.
Stop offering us plastic bags for groceries.
Stop wrapping multi-buys in unnecessary swathes of plastic.
Stop putting plastic stickers on fresh food.
Ask your MP:
For recycling and composting initiatives to save on landfill rubbish.
To educate people on the importance of recycling.
To raise the idea of a Plastic Tax for companies who rely unnecessarily on single use plastic.
To highlight the alternatives to single use plastics.
We need to make the use of single use plastics anti-social, like we did smoking and dog poo. We need to show our children by example, how to prevent the mistakes we made.
And that can be our legacy.
Courage!
EcoTykki 